The Lure Of The Mississippi Part 27

For some time the dugout drifted like a dead log swinging around to right and left with the current. The boys lay absolutely still, hearing their own hearts beat and listening to the low sound of the current against the sides of the dugout.

Barker rose up slowly. "Paddle," he whispered; "we are drifting into the timber."

Again they paddled in silence.

A flash of lightning threw a gleam of light over the dark water. A dugout shot out from under the timber on the west bank.

"Who goes there? Halt!" a low deep voice called, and the four travelers heard the click of two guns.

"We are friends," Barker replied.

"Pull in here!" the order came from the other craft.

Barker steered toward the sh.o.r.e and found himself alongside of two Confederate dugouts, with two men in each.

The leader flashed a lantern at the travelers.

"Who are you and where are you going?" he demanded. "Get out; we have to search you."

The searchers found a piece of fresh beef and two loaves of bread and some coffee.

"That's rich pickings," the leader commented. "We haven't had any beef between our teeth for two weeks.

"Come back in the woods a way and we'll roast some of it, right away.

But we can't build a fire here. The Yanks have a lot of ammunition to waste and they might shoot some Minie b.a.l.l.s at our camp-fire."

Their four captors seemed hungry, for they ate all the bread and meat and drank the coffee as if they had been crossing a desert.

"That was good of you," the leader remarked. "Wheat-bread, beef, and coffee are rather scarce in our town just now. We've been living on corn-meal and mule-steak.

"Now, Stenson," he continued, "you take this bunch down to the guard-house and they can tell their story to the provost marshal in the morning. I reckon they don't care to be shot before daylight."

"Mr. Barker," Tim asked, after they had been locked in a small room, "do you think they will shoot us?"

"Don't worry, boys," Barker said kindly. "We haven't done anything they can shoot us for. Just lie down and go to sleep. Thank G.o.d, we're in Vicksburg at last."

The examination next morning was not very formidable. It was easy for Barker to prove that he and his company were not Northern spies; moreover the meeting of the boys with their parents convinced the military authorities that Barker had told them the exact truth.

"But how did you get past the Union gunboats?" one of the officers inquired. "Did you get a pa.s.s?"

"If you please, gentlemen," the old trapper replied with a shrewd smile, "you see we got by and I reckon as long as we don't want to pa.s.s them again, it really makes no difference how we did it."

The officer was satisfied, but one of his colleagues took up the inquiry.

"My friend," he said, with a suppressed smile, "you have shown some ability as a blockade-runner, but your naval architecture is peculiar.

Why did you nail that sheet iron to the inside of your ship? Don't you know that it is customary to put the iron on the outside?"

At this question everybody laughed good-naturedly and with a broad grin, the old man replied:

"Well, you see, gentlemen, I had undertaken to deliver those lads alive in Vicksburg, and I was afraid that some of your men might fire at us before we had time to surrender. I was in a bit of a hurry when I converted that dugout into an iron-clad and I was afraid that she wouldn't navigate well if I nailed the iron to the outside, because I was too much rushed to make a good job of it."

"Well," the presiding officer decided, "I guess we'll have to let you stay. It would be cruel to send you back. Those Yankee gunners might start practicing on you. Too bad you couldn't smuggle in a little more fresh beef and coffee and white bread."

"Should have been mighty glad to do it," the trapper a.s.sented, and at that the court adjourned.

The parents of the lads had received most of the letters the boys and Barker had sent, including the one thrown over the Confederate parapets.

Of Hicks they had neither heard nor seen anything, and by his silence he stood condemned.

Like most people in Vicksburg during the siege, the Fergusons lived in a cave, where they were fairly safe from mortar sh.e.l.ls and Parrott sh.e.l.ls which the Union gunboats and batteries threw into the city every day.

For the sum of fifteen dollars two negroes dug a cave for Barker and Tatanka. Cave-digging had become a profession in Vicksburg and many of the colored men made good wages at it.

Barker and his party had heard a great deal of shooting and cannonading but now they were in the city at which the guns were aimed.

The mortar-boats, anch.o.r.ed below the city, did most of the bombarding.

The mortars were short guns throwing large sh.e.l.ls. They had to be aimed high and the sh.e.l.l fell almost vertically or with a great high curve.

This vertical fire did not do very much damage, but it drove practically the whole civilian population into caves in the high clay-banks. The civilians who had remained in Vicksburg had done so against the wishes of General Pemberton, and they were now living in constant terror of the sh.e.l.ls, although very few people were injured or killed.

On the second day of Barker's stay in Vicksburg, the bombardment, beginning at daylight, was especially heavy. Many of the people of Vicksburg had become so accustomed to the rushing and exploding of the sh.e.l.ls that they gathered at various high points to watch the sh.e.l.ls fly and drop.

Barker tried to induce Tatanka to go with him to Sky Parlor Hill, a high point where a good many people had a.s.sembled, but Tatanka would not come.

He sat in front of his cave and whenever he saw or heard a sh.e.l.l, he ducked into the cave as the boys expressed it.

"No, my friend," he said to Barker. "If you said I should fight Chippewas on Sky Parlor Hill, I would come, but of the big roaring sh.e.l.ls I am afraid."

It was in vain that Barker and the boys explained to him that the mortars were not shooting at Sky Parlor Hill, and that the big guns could not aim at any one person. He wouldn't leave the entrance of the cave.

"You go and come back and tell me," he said. "I like this place better than Sky Parlor Hill. May be I shall go with you to-morrow."

At night the mortar sh.e.l.ls with their fuses made a wonderful display of grim fireworks. After the sh.e.l.ls rose to the greatest height, they fell so rapidly that a trail of fire seemed to be following them. Generally when a sh.e.l.l struck the ground or a building, it exploded, but some remained dead, owing to imperfect fuses, like a fire-cracker that does not go off.

A district in which the sh.e.l.ls fell was at once deserted; and some caves sold very cheap, because their owners did not consider them safe.

The Parrott sh.e.l.ls fired from the besieging batteries were more feared and did more damage than the mortar sh.e.l.ls thrown by the fleet. One of those came with a horrid shriek and buried itself in the ground in front of the cave in which the boys and their parents were eating their supper. Although the sh.e.l.l did not explode, Tatanka was so scared by it that for the rest of the evening, he would not leave his cave at all.

The next morning, through the courtesy of an officer, Barker received permission for himself and his company to visit the quarters of the officer, a few hundred yards in the rear of the Confederate fortifications.

Here the ground was everywhere strewn with fragments of sh.e.l.ls, and with flattened and twisted Minie b.a.l.l.s which had struck the trees before they had dropped as spent b.a.l.l.s. Among the broken sh.e.l.ls the ground was peppered with the bullets from exploded shrapnels.

The quarters of the officer were practically a cave, or rather what the early settlers on the Western plains called a dugout. It was built on the same plan on which boys build their little caves to play Indian or Robinson Crusoe, only it was larger and more commodious. Its opening faced west, away from Union and Confederate lines. Its roof of logs and earth was strong enough to afford perfect protection against rifle fire and shrapnel, and it was so located that heavy sh.e.l.ls were not at all likely to strike it.

In this place the officer received and made his reports, and here he rested or slept, when he was off duty. However, his hours of rest and sleep were very few, because the Confederate regiments were so shorthanded both in officers and men that there was little time for rest and sleep.

The Confederate soldiers had orders not to fire unless they were attacked, because they were short of ammunition, but from the Union lines a more or less constant fire of small arms, shrapnel, and heavy guns was kept up day after day.